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MONTPELIER — Advocates of the state’s decision to move to a government-financed health insurance system in 2017 cheered the conclusion of a financing report the Shumlin administration delivered to lawmakers this week because it concluded what many supporters have always believed — that all Vermonters can have quality, comprehensive health care at a lower cost than they collectively pay today.

“The big story of this report,” Mark Larson, commissioner of the Department of Health Access told two House committees Friday, “is for less money Vermonters can have more coverage.”

He argued that the report showed that Green Mountain Care could be implemented, cover more Vermonters, provide more comprehensive coverage to many, extend vision and dental care to all children and raise the rate the state pays for medical services — and the bottom line would be $281 million lower over the first three years compared to projections for the status quo.

“This study comes to the same conclusion of numerous previous studies,” a joint statement from two single-payer advocacy groups, Vermont Health Care for All and Vermont Leads, declared. “It proves that a single payer health care system can cover everyone with a comprehensive benefit package at a lower cost.”

Longtime critics of the decision of the Legislature and Shumlin administration to head the state toward an experimental insurance system remained unconvinced Friday despite the forcefulness of Larson’s declarations about future savings and coverage advantages.

“I think we should look at any representations that this will result in cost savings very skeptically,” said Jeff Wennberg, executive director of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom. “The report really raises more questions than it answers.”

Wennberg suggested one significant weakness was the assumption that the state would be able to draw down even more federal funding under a single payer system.

“Given all that is going on in Washington, what is the likelihood that will be available?” he posed.

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Wennberg also noted the information that wasn’t in the report — how the state would raise the $1.6 billion that would be needed to supplement federal funds to operate Green Mountain Care. The law that headed the state down the road to a single payer system by 2017 directed the governor and his staff to provide the Legislature with a financing plan this month.

Larson and Robin Lunge, director of health care reform for Gov. Peter Shumlin, defended the administration’s decision to ignore the requirement to provide financing recommendations in this report.

Larson, who helped write the 2011 law when he was in the House, noted that the expectation had been that the state might be able to move more quickly to the single-payer system, so a 2013 deadline on a financing plan made sense. “We are in a different spot,” he said. The administration now proposes to deliver a plan by Feb. 15 for an extended and broad public debate about payment options.

Wennberg said the move to a single-payer health insurance system represents the biggest tax shift ever contemplated by state government. “That is a debate that should have started prior to passage of Act 48,” he argued, referring to the health care reform law.

Larson and Lunge suggested the report provided important detailed information about the projected basic cost of Green Mountain Care – pegged at $3.5 billion in 2017.

Larson stressed that without reform, individuals and employers will pay $2.2 billion for health care in 2017. Much of that spending would disappear under the single-payer system, replaced by the yet-to-be-determined government tax or fee that would raise $1.6 billion.

Critics like to focus only on the amount government would raise. “It’s only fair to refer to what would no longer be raised,” Larson said. “This isn’t $1.6 billion more than raised today.”